Rocking in the Free World

This is a somewhat self indulgent post,but that is because I turned 26 on Monday. Like all my birthdays save for my 13th, it was spent in Mysore at home, with me doing nothing.

I have this policy of doing absolutely nothing, or doing very little on my birthdays because it is that one day of the year where I feel extreme laziness and complete and utter unwillingness to do anything except chill, watch TV, read and just loaf around. In line with that, this year was no different.

What was different was that this time around, I didn’t have to apply for a holiday from work, since I am unemployed.

I must mention here that I am still staff writer for RSJ, but that hardly counts as a job to those who knew of my avatar as a techie in my previous firm. It is more exciting for the most part, though.

So being 26, unemployed, living with family and in debt due to a gargantuan education loan, I had decided in the previous post on this website that I would explore Mysore and see it through the eyes of a tourist, for it is only after you’ve discovered your own place can you venture out to explore the world. (Or some such melodramatic line that sounds like its been lifted straight out of Forrest Gump)

Rather than solicit hanging out with arbit people and seeing Mysore, I decided to hang out with a few friends and explore home, and in retrospect, it made so much sense and was much more fun, than to hang out with unknown people. This exploration bit didn’t lead to seeing all of Mysore, but checking out a few interesting spots in and around the city that made for a highly memorable time.

***

The Helipad: For those who know about Mysore, the helipad is located close to the foot of the Chamundi Hills, adjacent to the Lalitha Mahal Hotel compound. Previously, the entire section of land was open, and people could come and hang out here for hours together, but some parts near the place have now been fenced off, and there is a constant police presence in the area, for whatever reasons.

That doesn’t however present a dampner to the sight of the sun setting on the horizon on Mysore, and I have been to the helipad on umpteen occasions, and I must confess that even though there are many places from where the setting sun moves you beyond comprehension, standing at the helipad, with Chamundi Hills on your left and the Lalitha Mahal on your right, the sight of the burning sun setting and the onset of twilight to give the entire evening sky an eerie, haunting reddish tinge never fails to give me goose bumps.

The icing on the cake was the lighting up of the Mysore Palace a few minutes after the sun had set.

***

The Art Gallery and Mysore Palace: These are standard issue tourist spots that every person worth his salt would visit as a tourist to Mysore. However, one interesting thing to note is that the Art Gallery is filled with paintings by Raja Ravi Varma, who was enticed by the then Maharaja of Mysore to come put visit and paint. However the most interesting painting, the ‘Glow of Hope‘, is not by Raja Ravi Varma as most would assume, but by a person named S A Haldankar, who was a one-hit-painting-wonder. But what a master piece he created.

Aside from that, there’s also a self-portrait of Rembrandt and another piece by Peter Paul Rubens, though I’m quite aghast at how the paintings have been treated if they are actually originals. The same goes for the wonderful works by Raja Ravi Varma as well, for some of the paintings have some damage.

The Art Gallery does have some interesting content, but for most people, it is just walking around seeing pictures here and there, and these other non-interested spectators might just kill it for you.

The Mysore Palace is another place I’ve visited umpteen times, but this time around, I took an audio guide for all of us present. At INR 100, it wasn’t really cheap, but once the tour was over, I had a chance to see the Mysore Palace like I never had before.

The audio guide annotates intricate details of the palace that I had been oblivious to on previous visits, and the term of the day was, “Indo-Saracenic” to refer to the style of architecture in which the Palace was constructed. The sheer majesty of the building is evinced when one stands at the exact place the Maharaja used to sit at during public appearances, and looks beyond east-ward towards the main gate of the palace.

***

Roopi Falls: This place isn’t really on any tourist map. Nor is it the location of a waterfall. It refers instead to a canal near the aquaduct on the outskirts of Mysore where someone named Roopi, presumably under the influence, fell in along with his Bullet motorbike. (Consequently the name ‘Roopi Falls’)

This place, on the outskirts of Mysore is surrounded by farmland and is just the place to be at to unwind and relax after a long and tiring day. My friends and I popped some chilled beer, put our feet into the flowing water of the canal and spaced out like we never had before, to mark the end of a most memorable day, on which we embarked upon the Hari’s Magical Birthday Treat Tour.